Free The Devil's Garden by Nigel Barley Page B

mattress, her eyes closed against the weak light from outside. No sheet. No blankets. Just the formless cotton shift of the ward that would serve as her shroud when the time came—which would be soon. The bed was not best placed to catch any breeze but could not be moved. It was a heavy, wooden bed that stood out from the chipped enamel bedsteads of the rest of the ward and the reason was that a crystal set was hidden in the leg, that doctors listened to furtively through their stethoscopes during ward rounds. She was not supposed to know but then she had spent her life knowing things she was not supposed to know. Occasionally, it hummed and gave the game away and had to be surreptitiously kicked. Darkness gathered in the corners and she watched it advancing down the ward as night fell. It was supposed to be malaria but all they had to offer was boiled bitter papaya leaves, a cruel parody of quinine that was hardly likely to cheer Mrs Grimes up or break the fever. Everyone thought it tasted like quinine so maybe it did some good but no one knew for sure. But you could see that it went deeper than that and that it was as much despair as anything else. The old woman had just had enough of it all and had decided to go. For tuppence she would go with her, just lie down and feel the sweetness of turf rolling over her. Mrs Grimes drifted back to consciousness and reached out to grasp her hand. The touch was of sandpaper left out in the sun. She would want water which meant the long trek to the far end of the ward and the only jug. But she did not want water.
    â€˜It’s George I miss,’ she whispered through cracked lips. Lady Pendleberry patted and smiled comfortingly. George was the husband, killed in the bombing just before the surrender, some sort of lowly clerk at the waterworks, shabbily chubby—his rank in the scheme of things being fixed by his work cubicle without hatstand and piece of carpet, no telephone, second-hand Morris Minor parked outside—no driver of course. In the colonies you had to get used to people being out of place, usually rather above themselves, often beyond themselves. It was not just that they were not quite top drawer. Many had no drawers at all. And now even such authority and order as there once was had been swept away—except her own position of course, a rock above the flood.
    â€˜Do you think I’ll see him again, your Ladyship?’ She panted. ‘In Heaven, I mean?’
    â€˜I’m sure you will dear, when you finally get there. But don’t you go worrying about that now. Perhaps you would like some water?’ The war had affected religious faith in different ways. Some of the women had embraced it with a simple fervour that had them on their knees at all hours, night and day, since only divine intervention could bring an end to all this. But faith could not hide the fact that the chaplain was forever wriggling on the contradiction between an all-powerful and all-knowing, benevolent god and one who let things like this war happen in the first place. Sometimes, according to the chaplain, their present plight was to be seen as a test of that faith, on other days as a punishment for pride. Lady Pendleberry could not see why an all-knowing god could not know the state of her faith just as well as anything else and surely it was viciously cruel to have set up this war as a sort of extended moral driving test? And since god and imperial destiny had parted company, she found that she had rather less time for god than before.
    â€˜George was wonderful. I’d never find another like him. In bed. You know. Just wonderful.’
    Lady Pendleberry blanched and withdrew the hand that flew to her throat and felt for the absent string of pearls that had always hung there. This was the sort of intimate confidence that made her uncomfortable. Then duty reasserted itself and the hand went back.
    â€˜There, there, Mrs Grimes.’ She patted again with a little